Washoe County's lands bill ranks last in Nevada for the area it dedicates to wilderness

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Benjamin Spillman

Reno, Nevada downtown during winter with snow on the ground(Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Among Nevada counties that have asked Congress to resolve public land issues, Washoe County ranks last in terms of how much land it’s seeking to convert from wilderness study area to full-fledged wilderness.

That’s according to an analysis that compared a draft of the Washoe County Economic Development and Conservation Act to five other county-driven lands bills in Nevada.

The bill is a local attempt to streamline development by asking Congress to cede control of land on the outskirts of the Reno-Sparks urban area to local jurisdictions. It also seeks to establish more permanent environmental protection by converting a portion of wilderness study areas in the county into designated wilderness.

The amount of land converted to wilderness in public lands bills is important because protected areas for wildlife and low-impact recreation offset environmental problems that are exacerbated by development in other areas affected by such legislation.

A wilderness designation requires an act of Congress and is the highest level of environmental protection the federal government can apply to public land.

The analysis shows that under the latest, publicly available draft, Washoe County would replace 600,421 acres of wilderness study area with 174,526 acres of wilderness, which represents a 71 percent net loss in the amount of land with wilderness-style protection.

Including new national conservation area designations proposed in the Washoe county draft, the amount of protected acreage would decrease 57 percent compared to the status quo.

Land that's not designated wilderness or national conservation can be released altogether from wilderness study status, which could open the door to more intensive uses from off-road driving to mineral exploration.

“It is just striking to me how far out of step the Washoe County lands bill is with every other lands bill,” said Kyle Davis, the consultant who did the analysis on behalf of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Conservationists, through the Friends of Nevada Wilderness, have pitched a compromise that would result in 481,670 acres of wilderness, a 20 percent decrease from the amount of existing wilderness study areas.

Washoe County Commissioner Bob Lucey, the lead proponent of the bill, did not return a call for comment.

Sheep grazing in the Buffalo Hills Wilderness Study Area in northern Nevada on May 11, 2018.(Photo: Kirk Peterson/Contributed photo)

Washoe County spokeswoman Amy Ventetuolo said county officials drafting the bill haven’t seen Davis' analysis. She also said officials are still considering changes for an update to the draft bill.

“Because we are still working with the different interest groups we do not yet have a final map of the update that we can share,” Ventetuolo said. “Because of this, we do not have new numbers for conservation acreage. However, as soon as we have an update we will be happy to share it with you.”

Most of those bills resulted in a net loss of wilderness-style protection when converting wilderness study areas to different designations. But none of them stripped as much as Washoe proposes.

The Clark County bill in 2002 reduced acres under wilderness-style protection 18 percent, a Lincoln County bill in 2004 reduced it 19 percent and a White Pine County bill in 2006 added 339,692 acres of wilderness-protected land. A pending bill for Pershing County would add 31,053 acres of protected land and a proposed bill for Douglas County would result in no change.

Wilderness study areas are a creation of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.

The act ordered an inventory of Bureau of Land Management land to identify land that had "wilderness characteristics," meaning 5,000 acres or more of uninterrupted natural land with "outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined types of recreation."

The inventory identified about 100 areas covering more than 5 million acres in Nevada which became wilderness study areas.

The law also called on the BLM to recommend whether the wilderness study areas were suitable to be designated permanent wilderness. A wilderness designation is considered the highest standard of public land protection because it prevents new roads, vehicles, structures, logging or mining.

Under federal law, only Congress has the power to convert a wilderness study area to full-fledged wilderness or "release" it back to a less-protected status that would allow mining and other disruptive uses.

In the meantime, the BLM is required to manage wilderness study areas to maintain their wilderness character.

County lands bills, which in Nevada are typically a collaboration between local governments, development interests and conservationists that result in consensus drafts lawmakers introduce into Congress, are one of the methods used to resolve debate over which wilderness study areas should be converted to wilderness.

Congressional lawmakers representing Northern Nevada have all made consensus among local governments a requirement before introducing county lands bills.

Conservationists say the consensus approach that resulted in prior lands bills is lacking in Washoe County.

Officials from Washoe County and Sparks have indicated they’re ready to advance the bill. But members of the Reno City Council, citing a lack of emphasis on conservation as a major concern, have indicated they wouldn’t support the bill based on publicly available drafts.

“When we can’t fully participate at the table on the wilderness issue and help find resolution, it is very frustrating to me,” said Shaaron Netherton, director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. “They have the wrong wilderness people, or no wilderness people, at the table to do that.”